Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a plan to invest ILS 500 million (USD 141.9 million, EUR 128.8 million) in Eilat, in the country’s south, with a focus on seafood.
Netanyahu said the country would like to grow its seafood industry both to further economic development and as a means of enhancing Israel’s food security.
“Perhaps the most important thing that we are going to establish here is a park to develop food from the sea. This is the food of the future,” he said, according to Israel National News. “We cannot continue feeding humanity with protein from the land. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It pollutes and it is difficult. It will certainly remain but the protein of the future will be synthetic protein. However, that will take time until we know if it can exist. What certainly exists is the ability to take small fish that – in the sea – turn into big fish. This is the food technology of tomorrow – and it is already here.”
Netanyahu said part of the country’s investment in Eilat will be put toward creating a technology center focused on the development of advanced aquaculture practices. The investment will also fund the establishment of a team to formulate a plan to strengthen the National Center for Mariculture and advance a project to export farm-raised tuna, to be chaired by the director general of the prime minister's office.
“We are going to form a concern and establish a center here that will provide Eilat with an extraordinary future,” he said. “I want to turn Eilat into a center of knowledge and sea-based food technology.”
According to Globes, an Israeli business magazine, the National Center for Mariculture will receive ILS 90 million (USD 25.5 million, EUR 23 million) to research closed-cycle bluefin tuna farming.
The project is intended to make Israel a “power in technologies in food from the sea,” according to Netanyahu.
Photo courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel
